Prince Hunter

by Garrett Russell

  Hawker took a long pull on the can, swilling the beer around his mouth and enjoying the discomfort it caused for the other man.

  ‘You puzzle me, Gaffney. You’ve lived in South America so long yet understand such little Spanish. I can see in your eyes how much you despise us. Dagoes. Is that what you call us behind our backs?’

  ‘I’m not here by choice. You’d be right enough in that. But I’ve a job of work to do and I’m doing it as best as I bloody well can.’

  ‘You’re a bit far away from Belfast to be of any use to your cause.’

  ‘That’s where you’d be wrong, sonny-Jim. The money I make goes straight into keeping our lads with the ammo and weapons they need. Do you know this last year alone down here we’ve turned over more than six and a half million …’ Gaffney choked the rest of it back. He sat still and straight, his face going a deeper bloodshot red as he fought to control the impetuous spirit that had always bought him trouble.

  ‘Six and a half million,’ Hawker needled, whistling in low and genuine admiration. ‘That’s big business. And I bet you don’t count in Pesos. Dollars US or Irish Pounds?’

  ‘None of your damned dago business!’

  ‘Of course, it explains another thing that had me puzzled,’ Hawker went on as if he had heard no interruption. ‘How and why you’d have a bunch of Irish hard men so handy in Uruguay. And the German connection, too.’

  ‘You’re pissing in the wind.’

  ‘Unfortunately for you that’s something us sailors are good at. This Kreuzer on the list you provided. I’d bet at least one of my balls he travels on a Bolivian passport. He’ll be part of your pipeline from Santa Cruz, through to Montevideo, to … where do you sell your cocaine?’

  ‘Britain.’ Gaffney slumped, his face showing the emptiness of a man who knows he’s outwitted. ‘Some to Europe, to Germany and Scandinavia mostly, all the rest into England. That’s a laugh, isn’t it,’ he broke into a bad attempt at an educated London accent. ‘All those trendy West End ponces are the ones who pay for us to blow their arses off.’

  ‘And you have the hide to appeal to the world for moral support.’

  ‘So, it’s morals we’re discussing now, is it?’ Gaffney snarled, back to his customary composure. ‘I’ll tell you my morals in three little words: Kill Protestant Englishmen. That’s the morals I’ve lived by for nigh on thirty years now, and as far as I’m concerned drugs are just a means to make it happen.’

  ‘Does that mean you’ve extended your lines of combat to include the Germans and Swedes?’ Hawker said evenly.

  ‘The English! They’re all I care about,’ Gaffney screamed, lifting his fist and lunging towards Hawker. The younger man coiled instinctively to strike back but paused and looked straight up across Gaffney’s shoulder. The Irishman was either too far committed or too smart to be tempted to look back himself. His fist smashed into Hawker’s jaw with surprising force, knocking him back on the seat. Gaffney’s other fist followed with cunning swiftness, going low for Hawker’s gut with a blow that would have winded him if he hadn’t been quick enough to parry. Gaffney lined up his third punch and then the explosion came.

  The noise roared over their heads and echoed off the coach house wall, leaving their ears ringing in the silence that followed. Gaffney turned around, his fist in mid-air, and glanced up to where Hawker had looked before. On the flybridge, braced against the top of the ladder rail, Grivas lowered his handgun from where he had fired into the air and aimed it, double-handed, into the cockpit below.

  ‘What’s the trouble?’ he called.

  ‘Nothing. Nothing at all,’ Gaffney fell back to his seat. Hawker uncoiled slowly, rubbing his chin in mild amazement at the older man’s strength. A few seconds longer and he would have had to down him instead of just hold him off.

  ‘I heard anger,’ called Grivas.

  ‘My fault. A paltry little misunderstanding between friends,’ Gaffney shouted back. Then, under his breath to Hawker, ‘If I could ever call a half-Englishman a full friend.’

  ‘Make sure it’s not repeated,’ called Grivas. ‘I don’t want to jeopardise our mission by having to wound one of you.’

  Gaffney waited while Grivas assured himself that they had both calmed down. After a minute he relaxed his grip on the gun and turned back to the helm.

  ‘Remember this, half-Englishman,’ Gaffney snarled when they were again unobserved. ‘You’re my enemy by birth and by belief. If this mission of yours wasn’t so important to the liberation of my country, I’d be pleased to kill you now. As it is, if there is ever a leak that damages the profits from my business down here, I will know where it came from and I’ll hunt you and your English bitch family down to the ends of the fucking earth.’

  Hawker clamped his jaw. He forced himself to stay calm with the knowledge that he could crush the life out of the little Irishman any time he wanted to. Their sparring match had confirmed that just now. Gaffney punched like a street fighter, all strength and no technique, age was telling against him, and he had another fatal flaw: his undisciplined temper.

  Hawker let out his aggression on the steel beer can, which he flattened with a jarring blow before throwing it into the foaming wake.

  ‘Anaya must be paying you a fortune for this job,’ he said at length, still needling.

  ‘More than you know.’

  ‘A few million more tacked on to Argentina’s national debt?’

  ‘Much, much more value than that, sonny-Jim.’ Gaffney grinned without mirth. ‘We’re getting something no amount of money could buy us. Why, with that weapon I could …’ he stopped himself short again. But they both knew he had already said too much.

  The rest of the voyage was sullen silence.

  Gaffney withdrew to the cabin again, using the lowering afternoon sun as an excuse. Hawker went back up on the flybridge and lost himself in his own thoughts, aided by the mindless mechanical chore of conning the powerboat along its compass course towards the northern shore of the Plata, now visible on their port quarter. Their course was confirmed by the dark smudge against the horizon directly over the Bertram’s bow rail, where Montevideo’s perpetual mantle of smog obscured the mountains beyond.

  The crewman busied himself with mooring lines and a bucket to sluice down the foredeck. Hawker had noted with grim satisfaction that his presence too close seemed to make the man nervous.

  Grivas had tried to force a polite conversation. He eventually gave up in the face of Hawker’s cool refusal to respond. No hard feelings, he had been careful to say, he understood how Hawker must feel and could even sympathise, even though he himself was pure, unconflicted Argentino. What mattered now was the task at hand, he had said, and he had fetched Hawker and himself a beer from the ice chest below.

  Two more cans of beer later they were nosing through the harbour leads, the first lights of evening blinking to life among the jumble of buildings ashore.

  Gaffney bustled onto the foredeck, bright and hearty now with the boat ghosting towards the yacht club visitors dock.

  ‘I’ll handle this lot. I know all the right names to drop,’ he called up to the flybridge, pointing to the uniformed customs officer waiting at the end of the dock. He stamped impatiently around the deck while Hawker slid the Bertram easily alongside, stumbling once when Hawker threw the two big diesels into reverse to take some way off. As soon as the lines were fastened fore and aft, he was over the rail and onto the dock planking.

  ‘He looks as if he’d like to kneel down and kiss the ground,’ said Grivas.

  ‘Maybe so, but it also looks like he really does know the right names,’ replied Hawker. Gaffney was shaking hands with the customs officer like a couple of old friends. The uniformed man glanced idly at the handful of passports Gaffney held forward and shook his head broadly when Gaffney gestured for him to board the boat.

  ‘All clear,’ Gaffney called up to the bridge as the customs man strolled away whistling. ‘I’ll have a car around here in twenty minutes. Meet me
at the club entrance.’ He sauntered off in the direction of the clubhouse.

  Hawker helped the crewman snug the mooring lines while Grivas went into the cabin. The evening had come in quickly now and the only light on the dock was a solitary lamp casting weak light from a tall pole. Beyond its pool of pale yellow light, which only just spilled over the edge of the dock and onto one side of the boat, a gaping gulf of darkness stood between them and the shore. The welcoming glow of the clubhouse was less than 70 metres away.

  Hawker had been here many times before. He knew the layout well. The wharf they were tied up to was at one side of the building. Immediately in front of the building, now becoming lost in the gathering darkness, was a small beach. Beyond the beach, jutting out in the water parallel to the visitor’s wharf, was the first row of the yacht club marina. It, too, was underlit with a scattering of tungsten lamps among the maze of masts and high-sided power cruisers. There was plenty of opportunity here for a man to hide. All it would take was a sprint across the beach or one desperate dive and a swim through the black water. Beyond the clubhouse, he knew, was the car park where he could overpower a chauffeur to get away if necessary.

  He looked around the Bertram casually, as if checking how she lay against the pilings. Grivas was still below. His crewman was close by on the foredeck, unarmed except for a sailor’s clasp knife. Good. A weapon like that could come in handy and he knew he already had a psychological edge on the man. He’d be easy to take.

  With luck Grivas might be foolhardy enough to come after him, too. Hawker was sure Grivas would not dare use his handgun this side of the Plata, and certainly not in so public a place as the yacht club. That only left Gaffney.

  Hawker thought of a dash to the British embassy, or an international phone booth where he could call the English police directly, but the risk was too great. The instant he heard what had happened Gaffney could make his own call from right here at the club. Anne and Elizabeth would be dead within seconds. There was no choice but to eliminate Gaffney as well.

  Hawker glanced around again and decided to take the sprint. It would be easier to turn and take Grivas that way.

  The crewman had his back to him, squatting on the foredeck to coil a line. Hawker stepped silently forward. He stopped at a loose fender and with one hand skilfully untied the bowline knot that secured one of its lanyards. Without taking his eyes off the other man’s back he wrapped the ends of the cord around the palm of each hand, holding it taut before him. It was too thick to make a perfect garrotte, but it would do. The crewman still had his back to him, unsuspecting.

  Hawker slid both feet up onto the cockpit coaming by the aft end of the coach house and tensed himself for the rush. He pressed hard on his feet to get maximum grip from his rubber-soled deck shoes, slackened the lanyard enough to whip over the crewman’s head, and took a deep karate breath.

  ‘Click.’

  The sound was metallic and very close to his ear.

  ‘Try it and you die,’ said Grivas.

  Hawker turned to see a muzzle less than a hand span from his face. It was the thick black muzzle of a silencer. Behind it was the barrel of a .45 Smith & Wesson service pistol and behind the pistol was Grivas’ grim face.

  ‘I knew you would try something. It was only a matter of allowing you the time to see how foolhardy you were prepared to be.’ He kept his eyes hard on Hawker’s and barked, ‘Gomez!’

  The crewman turned around, took in the scene in a second, and ran the few paces aft.

  ‘Take the rope,’ ordered Grivas. ‘You’re fortunate I didn’t let him kill you first.’

  The crewman unwound the lanyard from Hawker’s hands and Hawker noticed his bandaged hand was shaking with nerves.

  ‘I suppose you had a similar fate in mind for me,’ Grivas said quietly in English. ‘And our Irish friend?’

  Hawker said nothing.

  ‘In that case you would have been fatally foolish,’ Grivas, taking silence as an affirmation, relaxed his grip on the pistol but kept it point blank at Hawker’s head. ‘I omitted to inform you of a simple precaution Almirante Anaya took – at my suggestion – prior to our departure today.

  ‘He had Gaffney make another phone call. His men in Devon now have a change to their standing orders. If they don’t hear from Gaffney personally and directly every 12 hours, they shoot to kill. So you see, my dear Paolo, Gaffney’s life is now as precious to you as your darling wife’s. You had better hope he doesn’t have a heart attack.’

  ‘Message understood,’ whispered Hawker. He put his hands down.

  ‘Now all that nonsense is over,’ Grivas stepped back into the coach house and came back with two jackets instead of the pistol. ‘Let’s go and meet these men of Gaffney’s. Take this. I would hate for you to catch a chill while you’re under my care.’

  He tossed Hawker one of the jackets, stepped past him and up to the dock as if nothing at all had occurred.

  ‘Do not leave the boat. Not even for a piss,’ he called to the crewman over his shoulder.

  Hawker paused for a moment, his head hanging limp. He had never felt so easily defeated in his life. He snapped out of it, followed Grivas up to the dock and pulled on the thick jacket. He didn’t need it for the chill of the night, but for the cold fury he felt inside.

  They found Gaffney in the bar of the yacht club. It was as if they had found a different man. This Gaffney was relaxed and affable, all smiles and high spirits as he joked with a group of men at the bar. When he saw Grivas and Hawker approach he detached himself from the group with a breezy farewell and moved to a quiet spot along the bar.

  ‘Welcome. Welcome to my country,’ he chorused over the Friday night hubbub. ‘I’m to thinking we’d have time for a noggin before the car comes. Name your poison.’

  ‘Now you surprise me even more, Gaffney,’ said Hawker, trying not to think of the phone call he would make every 12 hours. ‘I would never have pictured you as the posh club type, and definitely not a yacht club.’

  Gaffney glanced back at his drinking companions of a minute ago. One raised his glass in their direction in greeting.

  ‘Influence,’ said Gaffney. ‘It’s places like this that you make the right connections. I’m in the golf club, too. Me, who’s never played a stroke in his life. Now what’s your tipple? They pour a very fine drop of the true Irish here.’

  The barman had arrived at their end of the bar, so Gaffney ordered three Irish whiskeys in his broad brogueish Spanish without further consultation. He was clearly well acquainted with the barman, who he addressed as Patrick.

  ‘Patrick? Surely, he is Patricio,’ said Grivas.

  ‘Patricio’s what they christened him, sure enough,’ replied Gaffney, leaning against the bar in an easy yarn-spinning stance, ‘but underneath it all he’s as Irish as meself. Uruguay’s full of ’em. You know there are more Gallaghers in the Montevideo phone book than in all of County Armagh?’

  Allowing for boozy exaggeration, Hawker knew he was right. In one of those quirks of South American colonisation Uruguayan society was laced with Irish blood, just as Brazil had its uniquely large Japanese community, whole farming villages in southern Argentina were purely Welsh in family names, and la Boca district of Buenos Aires was rightly known as “Little Italy.” Montevideo got the Irish and Buenos Aires the Italians – as the popular Porteño joke had it – because BA got first choice.

  And that, Hawker realised, explained why Gaffney not only felt so much more at ease on this side of the Plata but also why the IRA had chosen this city in which to base its South American operations. How many high-ranking officials would Gaffney have leaned on, exploiting the sympathy of their emerald green heritage? How many businessmen would he have working with him, using the excuse of a blood bond to extinguish any feelings of guilt at the profits they made?

  Patricio/Patrick returned with three short glasses and the news that Gaffney’s car was outside. They knocked back the whiskey with one gulp and filed out, Gaffney exchanging fare
wells with other drinkers all the way to the door.

  The car waiting for them under the porte cochere was a dark green Mercedes-Benz 280SE. A young man lounged against the driver’s door with studied arrogance. He was tall but not athletically built and his thinness was grotesquely accentuated by a poorly cut pinstripe suit. He had dark hair and a thin wisp of moustache struggling to make its presence felt on the fine features of his face. As Gaffney and his two companions appeared through the door, he stubbed a quarter-smoked cigarette out with his heel.

  ‘Buenos noches, Sean me boy,’ Gaffney called from the doorway. ‘It’s mighty pleased to be back that I am.’

  ‘Juan Flynn, señors. Very pleased to serve you,’ the young man said in a crisply formal, polite Spanish. Another of Gaffney’s Uruguayan “Irishmen.” Hawker’s heart sank even further.

  ‘I hope you’re not leading us on a wild goose chase, Gaffney,’ he said in English. ‘The success of this mission relies on presenting ourselves as totally non-Latin American, or the British may put two and two together. If the names on that list of yours are as “Irish” as this character, we may as well go back to BA right now.’

  The young driver continued his politely blank smile. As Hawker suspected, he understood about as much English as Gaffney spoke Spanish.

  ‘Patience, chum,’ Gaffney grinned like a loon. His words were tinged with a slur and his eyes were going bloodshot. He must have packed a lot of whiskeys into 20 minutes.

  Despite what Gaffney would like to think, Sean/Juan’s Latin side was what dominated his driving. He threw the Mercedes at curves with the abandon of a rally driver, slewing and sliding through the suburbs of Montevideo as if an entire police force was on his tail. The surprise was that they weren’t.

  The green and now heavily road soiled car finally slid to a tyre-squealing stop outside a dimly lit bar in a narrow little street in the city’s north east quarter.

  Gaffney opened the front passenger’s door and stumbled out without comment. If this was his usual style of getting about town, he must have cultivated some very high contacts among the police to get away with it.